John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As someone fortunate enough to have been elected to Waterford City Council when I was 21 - some 12 years ago now - I count myself lucky to have been one of those young people who did get involved in politics and made a change at local level. Younger people have been represented quite well across the party political spectrum in Waterford, but women not so much. I echo some of the earlier comments of Deputy O'Donoghue, however. Many of the people elected at the same time as me in 2009 did not seek re-election when their terms ended in 2014, while many of those elected in 2014 did not seek re-election in 2019. It was mostly because of the structure and timing of meetings in the context of trying to hold down another job at the same time and the aspect of online abuse, which increased significantly from 2014 onwards.

It is difficult to try to balance the competing interests at council level in respect of meeting times. We traditionally had meetings in Waterford at 5 p.m., and then they moved back to 4 p.m. Since I have been elected to Seanad, those meetings are now being held during the day. I would not be able to attend those meetings and fulfil my obligations if I was on the council now. The organisations represented here today could take it upon themselves, therefore, to engage with each other and try to come up with ideas concerning the best times for meetings. I refer to a system that could facilitate the engagement of young people and women, in particular, in politics.

I echo the comments regarding the mobile youth vote. It is probably difficult to nail down people when they are 18 years old. Would Mr. Doorley agree that if we reduce the age of preregistration to 16 or 17 that there could be significant engagement at secondary school level to get people registered in advance? Those students are a captive audience and it is the major opportunity to preregister them. Turning to Ms Lane, what measures, over and above the quotas, would she like to see implemented? She touched on this area in her last answer when she mentioned the penalty in the supplementary funding. Gender quotas are working for national politics because there are penalties for political parties if they do not meet them. Such penalties do not exist at local level because funding is not linked in that regard. Ms Lane mentioned supplementary funding, however, and I ask her to tease out that aspect a little more. I think that is a very good suggestion.